All posts tagged data protection

European Union justice ministers gather in Luxembourg Thursday and Friday to discuss matters including a proposed data-protection regulation and directive. The legislation proposed by EU Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding back at the start of 2012 has finally made it through the European Parliament, so now it’s up to ministers to look at the proposals before they can become law.

Progress hasn’t been fast. Like trade negotiations, ministers are working “on the understanding that nothing is agreed until everything is agreed,” according to the background note for the meeting. So look at the meeting as an incremental step forward rather than the moment of revelation. Read More »

With Wednesday’s vote in the European Parliament, the European Union is one step closer to new data-protection rules. Next up are negotiations with the EU’s 28 member states, which are now expected to begin in June. (Read our story on the vote here and take a closer look at the Parliament’s changes to the original proposal here.)

There are plenty of controversial areas still left to agree on – for starters, the European Council, which brings together the 28 member states, must still decide on its position. Only then can the two institutions start negotiating the final wording of the law. Bring popcorn.

If you’re wondering how various interested parties are squaring up for the final round, here’s a selection of reactions:

The last month of the year kicks off with a strong immigration focus this week in the European Union, as ministers and EU officials will weigh in on post-Lampedusa monitoring in the Mediterranean as well as intra-EU migration.

On Monday, EUROSUR, a controversial new intelligence-sharing platform for border-control agencies developed by the European Commission comes into effect.

Tuesday is a day of high-level meetings. The Dutch prime minister, Mark Rutte, is in Brussels to meet with European Parliament President Martin Schulz (just don’t mention the downgrade!).

Norway’s prime minister, Erna Solberg, will also visit the EU capital to see Mr. Barroso and European Council President Herman Van Rompuy. Read More »

Three days of finance ministers, close scrutiny of national budgets, plus a visit from the International Monetary Fund promise a busy week ahead in Brussels.

Even though much of Europe, including Belgium, shuts down Monday for Armistice Day, there’s no rest for EU finance or budget ministers (depending on who does the job in each country). They will be in Brussels, hoping to give the EU a budget for next year. The EU’s competition commissioner, Joaquín Almunia, will cross the Channel to give speech at the London School of Economics and Political Science, so watch out for comments on the Liborfines.

The eyes of euro-crisis watchers will be on Paris Tuesday, where EU leaders, including European Council President Herman Van Rompuy and European Commission President José Manuel Barroso, will look for ways to fight sky-high youth unemployment. Read More »

Europe’s data protection reform manages to constantly surprise. Having looked like it was going the way of the single patent (over a decade of debate), this summer’s revelations about the National Security Agency’s activities provided a rush of new support, including Angela Merkel’s making the matter an issue in her election campaign.

But things got crazier still when the legislation produced another shock: a speedy committee vote in the European Parliament. After plenty of official emails about how the process would work once talks got close to midnight, lawmakers in the civil liberties committee took less than an hour to almost unanimously approve nearly 4,000 amendments to European Union Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding’s original plan. At least one parliament insider in Strasbourg had to cancel his dinner, having sensibly assumed he’d have plenty of time to follow the vote afterwards.

Next in the EU decision-making process (explanation here), the parliament will try to negotiate directly with the European Council to get an acceptable compromise – and with leaders meeting here Thursday the pressure is on. Read More »

The European Union has been the target of a bit of a charm offensive from Washington just as Brussels is in the middle of overhauling of its data-protection rules.

U.S. interest in this wide-ranging piece of legislation, which would introduce antitrust-style fines for those who play fast and loose with Europeans’ data, is hardly surprising: Because they are set to apply to all companies operating in Europe and target online information, EU data rules will have an impact on what happens on the other side of the Atlantic.

It’s been just over a year since the European Union’s Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding set out her proposals to reform the bloc’s data-privacy rules. With negotiations set to enter what EU diplomats are calling the “hot phase,” justice ministers from across the bloc will meet Friday to hash out their views on the proposals.

It’s a contentious dossier, which would oblige any company in the world seeking to do business in the EU to comply with the new laws. It’s in the ministers hands’ after being reviewed by several committees within the European Parliament. One diplomat commented on the “record breaking” number of amendments to the report on the legislation by Jan-Philip Albrecht, a German legislator for the Green Party who was in charge of the legislation in the Parliament. Read More »

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The Wall Street Journal’s Brussels blog is produced by the Brussels bureau of The Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones Newswires. The bureau has been headed since 2009 by Stephen Fidler, who was previously a correspondent and editor for the Financial Times and Reuters. Also posting regularly: Matthew Dalton, Viktoria Dendrinou, Tom Fairless, Naftali Bendavid, Laurence Norman, Gabriele Steinhauser and Valentina Pop.